Ask for a board :: ATA BBS

▓▒░ The hard requirement

It has to be 16-bit DOS.

ATA boots a small FreeDOS machine in the caller's browser and hands the board a serial line, the way a modem would. That machine runs 16-bit DOS software, and only that. A 32-bit board, a Windows board, an OS/2 board, or anything written for a modern operating system is outside what ATA is built to do, and no amount of work on my end changes it.

Inside that boundary, almost anything runs. If it ran on a DOS machine and answered a modem, through a FOSSIL or straight off the serial port, it is a candidate. That covers nearly the whole field: the QuickBBS family, the WWIV and Telegard lines, the Citadels, the Fido-era boards, the big commercial packages, and the scene boards nobody has thought about in thirty years.

Note that plenty of these packages had later 32-bit or Windows successors. ATA wants the DOS one.

▓▒░ The second question

Running it and handing it out are different problems.

Getting a board to run is my work. Being allowed to give it to you is somebody else's decision, and it is the part that decides whether a package becomes a one-click install or stays something you bring yourself. To bundle it, one of these has to be true:

It is public domain.Straightforward, and the easiest kind of yes.
It is shareware, and its license permits redistributing the unmodified package.Most shareware does. The license file inside the archive is what settles it, not what everyone assumes.
It is genuine abandonware, and I have looked into it properly.Case by case, investigated before anything ships. PCBoard is the example that qualified: a defunct company, and developers who had worked at Clark releasing the source along with workarounds for the registration.
The author says yes.If the software is still in active development, I go and ask. That is how Renegade got here, and there are other conversations underway.

▓▒░ Where I draw the line

What I will not do.

No cracked software.PCBoard is the only exception I have found, and it qualified as true abandonware from a company that no longer exists, with the developers themselves releasing the means. That is a very different thing from a keygen off a warez board.
Nothing modified.Every board ships byte-identical to its release, laid out exactly as its own installer would lay it out. The only files touched are the configuration files a SysOp would edit during installation.
Nothing whose license forbids it.VBBS 7 is the clean example. The source compiles easily, I have done it, but the terms say the binaries are not to be distributed and it is for existing registered SysOps only. So it stays out, and a SysOp who is registered can build it themselves.

▓▒░ Making it quick

What to send.

The more you can tell me up front, the faster it goes. Every one of these is something I would otherwise have to go and find:

The name of the board. Including any variant, if it had them.
The last version available. As exactly as you know it. Service packs and point releases matter, and the last version is often not the one people remember.
Where to get it. A link to an archive, a file name, anywhere you have seen it. This is usually the slowest part to work out alone.
Whether it has a known rights holder, and who. An author still around, a company that bought it, an estate, or nobody at all. If you know the story, tell it.

A one-line request is welcome too. It will just take longer, because everything above is what I have to establish before a package can be packaged.

▓▒░ Write to me

Send it here.

arielb7474@gmail.com

Put the board's name in the subject line and I will know what it is about.

I cannot promise every board will make it. Some will turn out to be 32-bit, some will have an owner who says no, and some will have nobody left to ask and nothing that qualifies as abandonware. But every one gets looked at, and the ones that clear both bars get built.